How to Structure a B2B / Enterprise Sales Force

Many companies can’t resist the temptation to hire a group of inexpensive junior resources to pound the phones and generate more sales at a lower cost of sales, but the results are too often disappointing for a variety of reasons – lack of support from marketing, required tools and processes don’t exist, or the sales simply requires a level of maturity, experience and competence that is beyond the average junior rep, to name a few.
If this has been your experience, you might be wondering what to do next.

More and more, we are seeing B2B companies leverage a three-tier sales model to close both transaction and enterprise level deals. We drew this out on the white board so we could share with you.

Three Tier B2B Enterprise Sales Organization

Three Tier B2B Enterprise Sales Organization

The sales effort is separated across the team depending on deal size. Often the Major Account Reps are outside or in the field, while the rest of the roles are inside. The pyramid reflects the proportion of different types of reps across the team.
The key to making this work is to provide a lot of structure, process and support, particularly at the junior levels, so all pieces work well together.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in these similar posts:

  1. More structure in hiring = more successful reps
  2. The Simple Success Formula – How do your reps stack up?
  3. Four Reasons Why You Need a Selling System
  4. Miller Heiman Releases 2009 Sales Best Practices Study
  5. Rainmakers Don't Make a Sales Machine

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One Response to “How to Structure a B2B / Enterprise Sales Force”

  1. custom name badges April 24, 2010 at 4:45 pm #

    Enjoyed the salesforce planning post. Not many blogs worth bookmarking but this is going on Delicious now!

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